RE: fsck.xfs... my /etc/fstab is set for xfs. However, I'm pretty sure I set it up as either ext3 or ext2 during install.
/boot is set for ext3, and I thought I set it for ext2. Is there a way to find out what fs it really is?

Hmmm... Weird.
AFAIK, nothing should modify your fstab for you (or at least, not without asking you).

I'm sure there's a really simple command to check what fs a device is, but... I don't know it.
The complicated way is to use parted... get it to display the partition table of your drive, and it lists the fs types.

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought anything would have changed it either... maybe I was dislexic when I set it up .
In any case, I emerged parted and it indicated /boot and / were ext3, so I changed the fstab. When I rebooted,
I saw a message that said /dev/hda4 ( / ) hadn't been checked in 53 mounts, check forced. 53 could very well
have been since install, not sure. Got that out of the way, thanks. I was mainly concerned that if I changed fstab
to the wrong fstype, it wouldn't boot.